Wait. Siblings? Were her feelings turning . . . sisterly toward him?
Morgana said, "Ah, Raum, you're just angry that the vampire did something supposedly impossible! When you couldn't." With a pointed look at Caspion, Morgana added, "When even the vaunted 'tracker' couldn't track them."
Cas glowered. "Because Raum ordered me off their trail! Eventually I would have found them somehow!" To Raum, he said, "I always did before. Yet you commanded me to stop searching. You as good as handed this revenge to the vampire!"
Raum slammed his fist against the desktop, rattling writing utensils and skull paperweights. "I gave that order because you were exhausted. You'd barely finished transitioning to immortal, hadn't even harvested a death yet! And I didn't want you to repeat what Mathar did!"
Everyone fell silent. "What? What did my father do?" Bettina finally asked.
Raum scowled, knowing he'd said too much.
Chapter 32
"Raum?"
At length, he muttered, "He hunted your mother's killers until it nearly drove him mad. He monitored Skye Hall's movements for years, trying to come up with a pattern, to predict where it would appear next. No use." Raum scrubbed his hand over his craggy face. "Mathar existed, like a ghost, as long as he could, holding out for you. Then he sought the front line of the bloodiest battle he could find, knowing it would end him."
He'd wanted to die? In a soft voice, Bettina said, "He couldn't live without her?"
Raum shook his head sadly. "Had no interest in that prospect."
Mathar's love for Eleara astounded Bettina. His love for me. He'd existed-in misery-for me.
No wonder he'd seemed distant. He'd been tormented. "So devoted," she murmured to herself.
Morgana sniffed. "Eleara was just as much so. Though I could never see it."
Bettina's gaze landed on Cas. Would she ever know such devotion from a male? And return it just as fiercely?
With the vampire. The thought arose without warning, startling her because it felt like . . . truth.
Cas met her eyes then, but again he didn't seem to see her. What if I've been horribly wrong about us?
"There's no finding the air territories," Raum continued. "I didn't want to doom Caspion to failure. I still don't know how the vampire located them."
Cas frowned at Bettina. "Did you tell the vampire about the Vrekeners?"
"No!"
"Outside of this room, no one knew about those four. So there's no way, unless . . ." Cas trailed off.
All eyes fell on her neck.
Raum sputtered. "You didn't . . . y-you wouldn't!"
Morgana grinned. "Did you gift the vampire with your blood?"
Bettina blurted the words: "It was an accident! He never bit me. We-we kissed and his fangs went sharp."
Cas, Morgana, and Raum groaned in disbelief.
"Oh, for gold's sake, you're really that naive, freakling? First R.H.P.S., and now this. Clearly, I'm derelict in my duties."
"This is why I still have her medallion!" Raum pointed out in a vindicated tone. "She's too naive."
Cas said, "Vampires like him don't have 'accidents.' "
"He tried to warn me!"